Sermons Based on the Lectionary of the Syrian Orthodox Church

New Sunday (1st Sunday after Easter)

Sermon / Homily on John 20:19-31

The Everlasting Breath of Jesus

Fifty years ago religious pundits said Christianity was dying. Harvey Cox wrote
in The Secular City that we had entered a new era, when people were learning to
live without religion.

But look at the events of the last few years. The remarkable controversy over
Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ. The unflagging popularity of Dan
Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, based on an old notion that Jesus married Mary
Magdalene and they had a child together, and that Mary and the child escaped to
France and became the center of a vast secret cult. The incredible success of
the Left Behind stories, that have sold more than 40,000,000 copies and helped
set the stage for what some journalists are calling the “rapture mentality” of
right-wing America.

What has happened? The power and creativity of the Christian faith obviously
aren't dead. They're enjoying one of the most remarkable resurgence anybody
could have imagined. Why is that? What's the secret of Christianity's enduring
dynamism?

Maybe it all goes back to something the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, says
occurred in the upper room in Jerusalem. The disciples gathered there after the
crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus suddenly appeared in their midst, even though the
doors were locked. He greeted them with the customary greeting “Shalom” and
showed them the wounds in his hands and side. He told them he was sending them
out just as his Father had sent him. And then he did a very odd thing. The Bible
says “he breathed on them.”

What was that about? Our word “inspiration,” you know, comes from the old Latin
words in spirare, “to breathe into.” Jesus was inspiring the disciples by
breathing his own breath into them. It's a wonder this didn't become a sacrament
of the church, because it set into motion one of the most powerful forces the
human spirit has ever known. Jesus breathed on the disciples and started a
revolution of creativity that has never stopped.

It formed the early church, which by the fourth century became the most powerful
influence in the world. It shaped the art and thought of the Middle Ages. It led
to the founding of the great universities. Our culture in America grew out of
the Christian Reformation. Even when the world began to look more secular, the
basic impetuses of art and education and medicine and philanthropy all came from
Christianity. The creativity Jesus released in that little room in Jerusalem
when he breathed on his disciples shaped and reshaped the world for centuries.

We can't imagine our culture without it. The great cathedrals, our legal and
judicial systems, our whole understanding of morality, our arts, Dante,
Shakespeare, Bach, Mozart, the modern university system, the healing
professions, social services, the idea of a United Nations, world service
organizations – none of them would have happened without the enduring breath of
Christ.

And that heritage keeps being renewed. This is why there's a resurgence of
religious interest in our own time. The creative power is still there. It's
still at work in our lives and culture.

You've probably heard the phrase “Caesar's breath.” It is science's way of
reminding us that energy never dies or disappears. The molecules of Caesar's
breath, 2,000 years ago, are still in our atmosphere today. They have scattered
around the globe and we are breathing them with every breath we take. Christ's
breath is still alive too. The breath he breathed into the disciples that day in
the upper room – the spirit and power of God – is still circulating. And it is
far more powerful than Caesar's breath. It's the reminder that God, whose spirit
hovered over the face of the deep at creation, was still making the world
through Christ and is still working on it today.

Where is that spirit operating now? What will its new manifestations be? That's
the trick, isn't it, to try to see it, to anticipate it, before it happens. To
guess which way the power of God is going.

I will tell you one thing. If the past is any guide, the Spirit of God will
manifest itself in such creative ways that we'll be totally surprised. It will
be something we probably never guessed or expected. I've been studying it for a
long time, and I will tell you what I think. I can't be sure. Nobody can. But I
will tell you what I think.

I think, with the new globalism produced by electronic communications and modern
travel and the erosion of old economic and political barriers, that a hundred
years from now we shall see a Christianity vastly transformed by its openness to
other religions and its desire to relate to them in the quest for a new and
higher form of spirituality.

I know that idea is threatening to a lot of people. That's why fundamentalism is
so strong in our country. People are scared of the unknown. They cling
desperately to what they regard as the great pillars of their own faith and
believe the world will come to an end if those pillars are threatened in any
way. That's why the Left Behind books are so popular. They convince frightened
believers that the world is about to come to an end because their old religious
culture is under siege.

And it isn't just in our country. There's a brand of fundamentalism in almost
every religion in the world right now. That's why Islamic fundamentalists have
been so successful in rallying Muslim fanatics against America. They too are
afraid of the collapse of the only culture they have known.

But this frightening time we are in is a great creative opportunity, and the
inspiration breathed into the apostles all those centuries ago is still alive
today, and it will respond to the opportunity by forging a new Christianity for
a new age. It will produce new understandings of the world, and new theologies
and ethics, and new forms of worship and devotion, and new societies for
advancing all of these.

Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State who has become one of the world's
leading oracles, said recently in The Washington Post that we are all too
shortsighted. While we are focusing our attention on the Middle East and our
troubles with al Queda and the terrorists, something of much greater
significance is occurring. It has to do with Asia, which Kissinger says is
becoming the next great focus of manufacturing and economic power in the world,
and which will soon rearrange all our perspectives of who we are and what it
means to be members of the world order.

Suppose he is right. Already Buddhism and Hinduism and other Asian religions are
becoming popular in the West. What will the ascendancy of the East do to alter
the playing field for Christianity? My guess is that Christianity is up to it –
that the creative power that has been there from the beginning, since that day
when Jesus breathed on the disciples, will prove itself as strong as ever.
Nothing will look the same after the revolution. But the spirit of Christ will
still be there, shaping a new world for our children and their children and
their children after them.

I remember a delightful little white-haired lady I used to visit in one of my
parishes. Her name was Deanne Gwaltney. I sometimes teased Deanne about having a
man’s name, and told her I had once been a dean too, but had given it up for a
worse job, being a preacher. I once asked Deanne, who was then in her eighties,
how she felt about all the change taking place in the world around us. “Oh, I
don’t worry about it at all,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “You know, God
has always managed to bring the best out of the worst, and somehow I don’t think
God will fail us now!”

About the Author:

The Rev. Dr. JOHN KILLINGER has been pastor of seven churches, a teacher at
seven colleges and is the author of seventy books and counting, including his
newest, called 'Hidden Mark: Exploring Christianity’s Heretical Gospel'